So here I am, level 53, and I finally have dead thrall. Yay! Except I can't hardly use it because most of what I fight is over level 40. I decided to try playing as a necromancer for awhile and I can't because the enemies I fight are, and will continue to be, immune to dead thrall by virtue of being over level 40. For such a high level spell it's odd that there is such a hard cap placed upon it. I understand if perhaps a 100 level conjuration perk is required to remove such limits, but as it stands it's a spell will quite a bit of potential that is quickly cut short.

I think a good fix would be to only allow players to resurrect enemies their level or below. Or even five levels below. Anything to remove this unfortunate wall from such an exciting spell.

And one minor complaint, I'm sad I can't use dead thrall on chaurus or other animals. I was really hoping to play as a "hunter" with my trusted animal buddy. I understand why giants and mammoths can't be dead thralled, but why not a chaurus or a bear? Anything physically smaller than a frost atronach should be dead thrall-able since it can fit through a doorway.

Anyone else feel this way? Are the PC users modding this problem away? Or am I alone with this feeling?

Did you try using the Necromage perk? Might increase the level cap, IDK.

Edit: Apparenlty it only raises the cap for vampires.

Also, with dead thrall it doesn't work on draugr yet the lower spells do. Also, I have 5 dead thralls somewhere in Skyrim. They always vanish after I fast tragel

So this would explain why I could never use a Forsworn Briarheart as a thrall. I also cannot see the point in a hard cap on the level.

it says in the spell description it only works on "people", i.e. the ten player races.

The only problem I have is that the thrall will disappear if I go through any loading screen to a new area. And it svcks cause I was planning on having strong thrall's follow me (an Orc and a briarheart)

...but why? All the lower level spells work on Draugr. Draugr are people too. What's the difference between a dead guy and a dead dead guy?

Draugr rights! The short answer is it's the same distinction the game makes between black soul gems and normal soul gems.

Draugr were people.

Once the brain has rotted out of the skull, there is nothing for the Thrall spell to work on. Without a mind that can function on Mana, the Mage would have to control all the muscles of the Thrall. This would be too difficult for any human mage to accomplish.

I'm still trying to figure out if there is a secure way to store the bodies of characters I have thralled. Does it matter if it is a named character (Orchendor) vs. a generic Volkihar Vampire for storage?

Also, to the OP, if you use the Necromage perk in Restoration, the cap is raised. You can only Thrall humanoids, but since vampires are considered humanoid AND undead, you can go beyond the normal cap when thralling vampires.

Does anyone know how thralls can be found after you lose them when fast travelling?

You may as well test it yourself, but I think named guys will last forever, others will decay.

I'll try it out when I get there. I'm currently level 38 with my latest necromancer and I'll give it a whirl. I know it won't be definitive with only my testing (Xbox), but at least it will give some people a little insight.

Essentially what I'll do is get Thralls (Named, Generic) bring them back to my home (going to buy Vlindrel in Markarth), then leave the city and wait for 14 days. When I go back, we'll see if they are still around. I'd like to think that 14 days is plenty time to test it.

What are you trying to thrall over level 40? Most things work, http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_Thrall <- try that for a list of the strongest thrall. You can improve/enchant the armor they already have and give it back, making them stronger.

With Vindrel Hall, there may be a possible bug to look out for. Keep 8000 gold around, and when the steward gives you the option to buy the house, buy it immediately. Don't get up to that point with the Jarl quests until you have the gold ready to go. Not saying it's inevitable, but I have heard there can be problems.

I've heard of bugs with various houses, but wasn't sure which. I wanted to make sure I had the gold to buy the house and all the amenities before going in it. I could have bought Breezehome awhile ago, but wanted something I haven't tried yet. As of right now I've got enough gold, I'm just on my way to go get his father's shield. Then after I buy the home, I'll go accumulate the Thralls and try it out. I'm not sure if there is already a thread on the matter, but if not I'll start a new thread and post the results (assuming people want to hear).

not true.... you can raise some skeletons.... the ones that are not broken to pieces also draugr must have brains they talk and laugh when your fight them, also it says in a book that draugr carry very bare amounts of life regen there life when they sleep. which is probably why they breath are not like other tes zombie (i.e. missing limbs and expossed guts)

-Blood for the Blood God

Alot of the times they are deleted by the game itself most likely trying to consurve (Spelling?) memory, otherwise they are at the last place you left them I remomber my two draugr deathlords (via mod) got stuck in broken oar cave and had to use console commands to get them out.....

-Blood for the Blood God

You select them in your console and do

moveto player

to teleport them to you. Always save before traveling if you have autosave off (which should always be off in the first place because it is the number one cause of long load times, CTD, corrupted saves and save bloating).

I noticed they get lost more often when traveling directly into a city. might be better to travel a stable and walk in.

Killing them and rethrall seems to help as well if they keep disappearing after fast traveling.

*Phew* I figured you meant 'broken' as in 'OP,' and was going to come in *****ing up a storm over how the damn spell already has some pointless level-40 cap that makes most of the useful NPCs you could thrall un-thrall-able.

Here's the biting irony of the whole 'too-powerful' malarky: in nearly every case in which this happens, you are casting the spell on an NPC whom you've just defeated in combat, so by all reasonable rights, you are more powerful than they are / were. To then turn around and suggest that their lifeless corpse is somehow more powerful than your master-level abilities in some sort of whacked-out rock-paper-scissors setup is so counter-intuitive that I'm surprised a black hole doesn't form every single time the 'too powerful' message pops up.

Yes. The game still registers them as following you, but they don't automatically appear - this usually only happens when you fast-travel to the interior of one of the five walled cities. Sometimes they will run up to you if you if you wait a moment, but generally they will get 'pulled' to you whenever you enter an interior location, so do that as soon as you arrive at the city. On the other hand, you can generally prevent their temporary disappearance by fast-traveling to the stables outside the city and walking through the gates manually.

But since we're on the subject, be advised that certain corpses are scripted to disappear when you leave their presence (or rather once you find yourself in a different cell than they are in). NPCs spawned by random encounters are set to disappear as soon as you are out of the cell, and are not advisable to use as thralls - the only two exceptions I've found are Talsgar the Wanderer and the Old Orc.

Secondly, any citizen of one of the five walled cities will be removed roughly a day after they are killed so that they can be 'buried' in their respective Hall of the Dead, so if you thrall one and fast-travel to another city, odds are you'll lose them. But actually I found a little glitch for keeping them around in which you do just that but immediately return to the city in which you killed them and enter an interior location - they'll still appear thralled behind you, even though they've technically been buried (an urn or coffin will still be added in their honor). This is a way to keep the corpses of such citizens around, but thanks to patch 1.3, this glitch is pretty much useless anyway unless you really want such an NPC as a permanent thrall.

Interesting stuff

One of the quests has a journal that explains that the Nords use quite a good embalming technique for their dead, that is the reason why the corpses aren't badly decomposed.

Unfortunately patch 1.3 has sent the refresh window for corpses from the original 7 days down to 1 damn day - this change is largely what spurred me to finally make an account here so that I could register a complaint that might have a snowball's chance in hell of getting heard. Prior to the patch you could keep nearly any corpse in the game around indefinitely (even respawning enemy NPCs) provided that you never stayed away from the cell you were keeping them in longer than 7 days, which prevented a refresh and kept them from being cleared out (past tense isn't wholly applicable I guess, since I deleted the damn patch pretty quickly after figuring out what it did).


I just made a large post in my other topic doing my best to explain how permanent corpses work:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1331003-a-plea-to-the-bethesda-staff-from-a-longtime-necromancer/page__st__30

post #56

Heh. Yeah, in another topic about Lichdom, i had an idea where becoming a Lich would increase the power of Destruction/Conjuration spells by 25% (Similar to Vampires getting stronger Illusion spells), among other things. That would effectively raise the Lvl 40 Dead Thrall cap to Lvl 50.